Category: fashion

athletes · body image · cycling · fashion

On going commando and athletic clothing

Sam B19 Comments

I’m in the middle of writing a longer post on tensions between the standards of ladylike behavior, on the one hand,  and the values of athletic performance, on the other. One of the issues I’m thinking about in that context concerns athletic clothing. I’m interested in the extent to which athletic clothing gets us out of our comfort zone. I think there’s tension between the norms of athletic performance attire and the ways in which we’ve been socialized as girls and women to think about clothing and self-presentation.

And obviously this matters to women. A lot. See my post No way am I wearing that! Body conscious clothing as a barrier to entry to women’s sports.

The number that got me was this one: “67% of women say they wear baggy clothing when exercising in order to hide their figure.”

But the exact issue that came across my screen today was the issue of underwear and athletic clothing and I thought I should discuss it now while it’s timely.

The first story I read was this: Why Are Women Wearing Thongs to Exercise?

Amanda Marcotte discusses the recent Lululemon see through yoga pants scandal and quotes a number of women saying the real issue is people seeing thong lines through the yoga pants. It’s a funny post and she offers a radical suggestion.

“Here’s an idea for women who really are this worried about having visible panty lines under your yoga pants: Don’t wear underwear. It’s not like flies or ants are going to get in there if you don’t seal it off tightly. If your concern is maintaining maximum sexiness at all times, never fear. My careful perusal of photography provided for straight male audiences suggests that while men do indeed find the thong sexy, they have an even stronger preference for women who are wearing no underwear at all. If you choose to share your preferences with the world at large through the the yoga pants equivalent of vanishing ink, well, that’s not up to the rest of us to judge. “

Now, I thought that was a practical suggestion and not particularly radical. But you get a sense of how controversial a recommendation it is when you read the next post by one my fave local bloggers, 3 zigs and a dog.

One of the Zigs reports being shocked that 2/3 of the women in a Women’s Running magazine survey reported wearing running tights and shorts without underwear. In the post aptly called Commando, Zig writes:

“WHAAAAAT? Two thirds of you people are commando?  TWO THIRDS??? Are you crazy? You are tempting wardrobe malfunction fate!”

For her the real issue is ripped shorts and I don’t think thongs would help much in that regard.

The whole thing is a bit on a non-issue for me. I’m a cyclist and while LiveStrong puts their post on the topic in the form of a question– Do You Wear Underwear Under Cycling Shorts? –there is only one right answer and it’s “no.”

Cycling shorts are designed to be worn without underwear. That’s what the chamois is for. Putting fabric between you and the chamois sort of defeats the purpose.

From Hot Sweaty Mamas. That’s right, you don’t wear panties under your bike shorts! “No panties under the bike shorts. That’s right, bike shorts are designed with a built-in chamois and are meant to be worn sans undies. Might sound crazy at first, but the last thing any woman needs is extra fabric bunching and burrowing in an already sensitive area. If you’re worried about feeling a little tender “down there,” look for shorts with extra padding and an anti-bacterial chamois. You’ll pay a little more for the bells and whistles, but odds are you’ll notice the difference.”

I’ve had the worse case scenario happen, the very thing that terrified the Zig. I ripped a pair of bike shorts while halfway through a 90 km ride. What did I do? I wrapped a spare bike jersey around my waist and had my partner draft behind me. Not the end of the world though I missed being able to draft behind him.

In other sports that I do, I’d say the running survey is about right. My guess, though I don’t take surveys, is that more than half of the women I run, row, bike etc with don’t wear underwear underneath tights and fitted shorts.
Here’s two considerations in favour of the commando option:

1. Performance sports clothing is made of fancy high tech quick drying sweat wicking fabric. It’s kind of miraculous stuff. It’s not easy to find underwear made of same and it kind of spoils the effect if you have sweat soggy underwear under high performance wicking fabric.

2. It’s not like you don’t immediately wash sweaty exercise attire. So who cares if you don’t wear underwear under it?

Up to the individual entirely of course. Except in the case of bike shorts. There there’s a right answer.

What do you think? Since this is a discussion about the clash between traditional feminine gender roles and performance athletic clothing, let’s leave it to the women reading the blog.

athletes · body image · fashion · gender policing

Crotch shots, upskirts, sports reporting, and the objectification of female athletes’ bodies

Sam B36 Comments

A front page figure skating picture in the Globe and Mail recently caused a stir. You can read about it here and here and here.

Here’s a brief run-down of the events: The front page of The Globe and Mail last Monday  featured 17-year-old figure skater Kaetlyn Osmond of Marystown, Nfld. Osmond came in eighth place overall at the World Figure Skating Championship here in London, Ontario over the weekend. Some critical comments on Twitter about the selection of the photo were followed by a response from Globe public editor Sylvia Stead: “Photo on #globeandmail front today is not acceptable in my view & readers. More later.” Eventually the story died down after Osmond herself tweeted that she liked the photo and a few of us were left wondering what the fuss was about. See the “not acceptable” photo for yourself at the bottom of this post.

Personally, I don’t mind the picture. I guess I wouldn’t have included it below if I did. And I think it’s odd that the Globe was so quick to apologize and so adamant in its apology. Kaetlyn is smiling, happy, excelling at something she loves. It doesn’t seem to me there is anything particularly scandalous about it. No one actually says what’s supposed to be wrong with the picture but I gather the complaint is that it’s a ‘crotch shot.’  In this case though the view is one you’d have if you were watching her compete.  I think that’s different from the ‘odd angle’ crotch shots of women athletes that are so common and so awful.

Another sport that’s known for scandal around the way it’s photographed is, of course, beach volleyball. See What if every sport was photographed like beach volleyball? and read Jezebel on the leering Olympics sports reporters. No one denies that athletes have striking bodies but it’s the emphasis on body parts rather than athletics that makes feminist blood boil when it comes to reporting on women’s sports. Why can’t we care about what those bodies do, rather than on what they look like? (See our past post Athletic versus Aesthetic Values in the Pursuit of Fitness  for some discussion of this distinction.) Now beach volleyball is controversial not just for the photos but also for the uniforms female beach volleyball players are required to wear and there’s some argument that in that case, that’s where the battle should begin.

Crotch shots seem worse yet when they are photos taken at peculiar angles with the resulting image, captured for all eternity, being nothing like one would have seen watching the sport in question. Something that flashes by quickly is frozen in time, blown up, and displayed in a manner to which the photo’s subject would not have consented. The issue of crotch shots of female athletes is addressed by feminist philosopher Carolyn McLeod in her paper “Mere and Partial Means: The Full Range of the Objectification of Women” published in the  Canadian Journal of Philosophy (Volume 32, Issue Supplement, 2002, Feminist Moral Philosophy) McLeod’s philosophical aim is to defend the idea that there can be degrees of objectification and that lots of the objectification of women in contemporary Western society that contributes to oppression is “partial objectification.”

In the course of her argument for the degreed nature of objectification (about which I think McLeod is importantly correct) McLeod tells a story about her experience as an athlete and the subject of a crotch shot photo, as an example of partial objectification:

“When I was a teenager, I was in a  tennis tournament in a small town where the McLeods of my family first  settled in Ontario. I was in the finals of “ladies singles.” The next day, a picture of me appeared in the sports section of the local newspaper. I  was lunging for a ball, and like a good “lady” of tennis, I was wearing  a little skirt. Clearly the photographer had taken the shot while lying on  his back, for the most prominent feature of it was my crotch. (It became  known in town as “the crotch shot.”) My Aunt Fern fumed (my mother laughed), and Fern almost boiled over when she found out that some  men at a nearby hydro plant (what we call “Hydro”) put the picture on the wall in the men’s change rooms. The whole thing was discomforting  for me, especially becoming a target for the sexist jokes and fantasies  of men at Hydro. (I’d worked at Hydro, so I knew about the jokes.) Never before had I imagined myself so thoroughly as something that could just get men off. I was angry with the photographer, although I later found out that it was a photographer’s trick to point a camera  upward if you want only one figure in a shot and no background objects to distract attention from it. It is possible that the photographer did not intend to produce a crotch shot. “

Crotch shots in the context of sports reporting seem to me to be on a continuum with the loathsome phenonama of “upskirting.” If sports photos are often partial objectification, then upskirt photos are the full blown thing. Here’s how Wikipedia describes the “upskirt.”
 

Upskirt refers to the practice of making unauthorized photographs under a female’s skirt, capturing an image of her crotch area and underwear. The term “upskirt” can also refer to a video, illustration or photograph which incorporates the upskirt image. The term is also sometimes used to refer generically to any voyeur photography – i.e. catching an image of somebody unaware in a private moment. The practice is regarded as a form of sexual fetishism or voyeurism and is similar in nature to downblouse. The ethical and legal issue relating to upskirt and downblouse photography is one of a reasonable expectation of privacy, even in a public place. The victims of the practice are almost exclusively females, including teenage girls. Women feel harassed or humiliated when they realise that they have been a victim of the practice. This is especially the case when such images have already been disseminated on the Internet and they are identifiable.”

Let me end with some advice: If you should search either “upskirt” or “crotch shots of female athletes” be prepared for an avalanche of tumblrs. Sigh.

Do Cupcake Rides and Heels on Wheels help or hurt the cause of women’s cycling?
cycling · fashion

Do Cupcake Rides and Heels on Wheels help or hurt the cause of women’s cycling?

Sam B27 Comments

Let me begin by saying that I like riding with other women. Though most of the time I ride with men or in mixed groups, some of my best riding experiences ever have been women only. I rode with the Valkyrie Vikings in Canberra, Australia and with the Women on Wheels in Dunedin, New Zealand and I’ve taken part in lots of women only cycling events such the Tour de Femme, women’s crit racing with the Vikings, and women’s track riding and racing in New Zealand. I wish we had enough women riding and racing to do that here!

Here’s the Valkyrie Vikings + a couple of coaches and spouses:

vikings

And here’s the Women on Wheels:

wow

But these days I find myself feeling a little bit queasy about the flavour of some of the women only social rides that are making the cycling press: Heels on Wheels? Cupcake Rides? Really?

You can read here about Toronto’s Cupcake Rides. Also Momentum Mag just did a piece on Women Only Rides including the Heels on Wheels rides.

Obviously there’s a huge difference between women only racing groups and women only rides designed to get women out who’ve never ridden a bike in traffic before. And people start in different places and I’m okay with that. Like Tracy’s ambivalent feelings about pink though, I’m uneasy associating women only with gooey sweet cupcakes on the one hand and high heels, on the other. Seems we’re either  sweet and adorable or adult and sexy. How about just out for a ride? Couldn’t we have women’s coffee rides?

Partly, I worry about the women left behind who aren’t about cupcakes and heels. But also I worry about associating women on bikes with femininity. Some of the time, can’t femininity be optional? (I know I worry about this a lot. See past posts Play hard, look cute!, Running skirts and sexism, and Padded sports bras and nipple phobia.)

I like the idea of getting people to ride in their regular clothes. Though I don’t own a suitable bike or wardrobe, I love the idea of Tweed Rides. “Tweed Ride Toronto is a group bicycle ride through downtown Toronto, in which the cyclists are encouraged to dress in classic tweed or any smart looking outfit. Any effort made to recreate the spirit of a bygone era is also appreciated. Any and all bicycles are acceptable.” Read more about Toronto Tweed rides here.

So it’s not the style of bikes and clothing that gets me, nor is it the women only aspect. (I like the women only bike mechanics classes such as that offered by the Toronto co-op Wenches with Wrenches.) I see value in both these things. But what bugs me is the association of women with a particular feminine aesthetic.

I am passionate about getting more women on bikes.  It matters because it’s good for women and because it’s good for urban cycling generally. In 2009 Linda Baker wrote a great piece for Scientific American called “How to Get More Bicyclists on the Road: To boost urban bicycling, figure out what women want.”

“If you want to know if an urban environment supports cycling, you can forget about all the detailed ‘bikeability indexes’—just measure the proportion of cyclists who are female,” says Jan Garrard, a senior lecturer at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, and author of several studies on biking and gender differences.

In the U.S., men’s cycling trips surpass women’s by at least 2:1. This ratio stands in marked contrast to cycling in European countries, where urban biking is a way of life and draws about as many women as men—sometimes more. In the Netherlands, where 27 percent of all trips are made by bike, 55 percent of all riders are women. In Germany 12 percent of all trips are on bikes, 49 percent of which are made by women.

More recently the book City Cycling  (MIT Press 2012) edited by John Pucher and Ralph Buehler  talks about the role women play in urban cycling and commuting.

One chapter, “Women and Cycling” is co-authored by three women professors of urban planning, health and environmental science who find the percentage of women cyclists in a locale to be a bellwether of biking safety and convenience. Women, the co-authors say, are an “indicator species” for bike-friendly cities. In cities and countries where a high percentage of bike trips are by women, rates of cycling are high, and cycling conditions are safe, convenient and comfortable. Where relatively few women cycle, rates of cycling are low and cycling conditions are unsafe, inconvenient, uncomfortable and sometimes impossible.

It’s clear we need to do something to close the gender gap in cycling.

From The U.S. Gender Gap in Bicycle Traffic: “Most estimates suggest that men are about three times as likely as women to be biking in the U.S. ….This is significant, because men don’t bike more than women everywhere in the world.  But they do in the United States.  In some European countries (like Germany, the Netherlands, and Demark), biking is undertaken much more evenly between men and women.  The U.S. Department of Transportation found that only about 24% of biking trips were made by women in 2009.  So, not only are more men biking, but they biking—on average—more often than the women who bike too. ”

I don’t have Canadian statistics at hand but it seems to me this is another area where we are closer to our American cousins than were are to Germany and Denmark.

So if Cupcake Rides and Heels on Wheels rides work, more power to them, I guess. I’ll swallow my queasiness and rejoice at the sight of more women on bikes. I’ll be the woman not in heels, not eating cupcakes, heading out on my bike for coffee…I’d love for you to join me.

*The featured image at the top of the post is from the New York Times and accompanies their review of “Heels on Wheels: A Lady’s Guide to Owning and Riding a Bike.” By Katie Dailey. 96 pp. Hardie Grant. $14.95. The review is well worth reading. Here’s an excerpt: “Ms. Dailey identifies four chief types of “ladies burning rubber out there”: the Fashion Victim, whose outfits harmonize with her trendy neo-vintage wheels (like Agyness Deyn, Ellen Page and their emulators); the Speed Demon with extraterrestrial helmet and sleek, Matrixy gear (like Gwyneth Paltrow); the Earth Mother, who careers toward farmers’ markets with her baby bobbing precariously in the front basket; and the Retro Rider in Steampunk get-up, whose vehicle “weighs more than a cement-mixer.””

I’m a speed demon, I gather.

image

body image · fashion

The Saga of the Mannequins Who Aren’t Size 0

Tracy I6 Comments

mannequins It all started on Sunday when a friend sent me a link to this page.  According to the article, H&M in Sweden introduced mannequins in sizes 6 and 10 (pictured left). The comment under the photo, attributed to RHUer, states that “some are saying they [H&M] condone obesity.”

For those of us who have had it with the ridiculously unsustainable and even unattainable body ideal that has been foisted upon women of late, them’s fighting words!

I was quick to post this on my Facebook wall and on the blog’s Facebook page.  Friends were equally quick to let me know that The Washington Post reported it as a hoax. As it happens, it’s not a hoax. The WP has issued a correction.

It turns out that the mannequins didn’t appear in H&M in Sweden, but rather in a different Swedish store called Åhléns. Blogger and photographer Becka.nu blogged about these mannequins in 2010.

The renewed interest came lately because a Canadian radio station posted the pictures on its Facebook page and the images got over 600,000 “likes” and went viral.

It doesn’t take a genius to explain why.  So many women posted “ahem!” type posts about finally seeing mannequins in realistic sizes.  Lots of comments noted that size 6 and 10 are nowhere near obese.

We have been conditions to see mannequins that wear the smallest sizes.  Super-models are selected for how well they can resemble mannequins. And then this all gets twisted around so that super-models become the standard feminine beauty ideal. Tall, thin, and featureless, like mannequins.

Putting realistically sized mannequins in store windows and then having them labelled “obese” is good evidence of how harshly our cultural gaze judges women’s bodies.  The fact that so many women felt relieved and pleased at the site of these mannequins demonstrates just how urgently so many of us are feeling the need for a shift in cultural expectations and standards for women’s bodies.

Sam and I have written a lot about this issue and will no doubt continue to have lots to say. The attention these mannequins have received, even if it came three years later than the original post, is a good sign that we are not voices crying in the wilderness. Women are ready for a change.

I’d like to reiterate what a few commentators have emphasized: these are not PLUS sized mannequines.  Even size 6 is quite thin and small, and 10 is about average (in fact, a little search around the internet turns up women’s dress size averages in North America ranging from 11 to 14).  Our views and expectations of women’s bodies (of our own bodies) are distorted.

I hope the next generation of young women can grow up in a more reasonable world where size and body image is concerned. I chatted with a young woman in the locker room at yoga the other day about her struggles with body image (she was reading a book by Geneen Roth called Women, Food, and God, and I asked her about it). She told me about the ease with which her mother would throw out comments about her (the young woman) needing to lose a few pounds.  The young woman has never felt good about her body and is desperate for a change.

This interaction reminded me, as if I need reminding, that culture-wide we have such a distorted view of the body that even beautiful and enviably fit young women are painfully self-conscious and full of self-loathing about their bodies. I touched on this in my discussion of the two different locker rooms not too long ago. It also made me sad because we have a right to love ourselves, period.

The comment frenzy around these non-size zero mannequins fills me with hope. Maybe we actually have had it. Maybe the beauty ideal is about ready to change.

Related posts:

Why the “Thigh Gap” Makes Me Sad

Loving the Body You’ve Got: Why Love is a Better Motivator than Hate

A Tale of Two Locker Rooms

body image · clothing · fashion

The day I discovered the dreaded camel toe

Sam B31 Comments

Okay so I live in a bit of a cave. It’s a happy cave filled with friends, family, and other assorted human and non human loved ones who largely share my attitudes to a whole bunch of important stuff. (Except maybe the cat. The cat might be an anti-feminist infiltrator. You can never tell with cats.)

That’s either because we talked one another into these views or they’ve been socialized into them (hi teens!) or they’re part of the price of admission to the cave. But the downside of living in a happy cave is that it can be a bit of an echo chamber with the same shared ideas rattling around.

That’s my long way of explaining how it was I came to know about camel toe so late in the game. And in this case, I’ve got to say I’m not sure either the world or me is any better for the knowledge. It just makes me grumpy.

First, what is it with these turns of phrase to describe women’s ‘flawed’ body bits? Camel toes, back fat, dinner plate arms, muffin tops, ‘turn off the headlights’? What? Just stop it please. Loathe your own body if you want but end it with the labels.

Until a story complaining about Lulelemon’s ‘no more camel toe’ ad crossed my Facebook newsfeed, I had no idea this was an issue. At first I didn’t get the ad since I didn’t see the problem they were talking about as a problem. And the name made no sense to me.

I was forced to Google the phrase. (My advice: don’t. Celebrity camel toe tumblrs? It’s a sad world.)

Wikipedia tells me this: “Camel toe is a slang term that refers to the outline of a human female’s labia majora, as seen through tightly fitting clothes. Due to a combination of anatomical factors and the snugness of the fabric covering it, the crotch andpudendal cleft may take on a resemblance to theforefoot of a camel.”

There you have it.

My question: Why do we care?

It matters to women who lead physically active lives since it’s fitted sports clothing which causes women who care the most grief. I started to wonder if the dreaded camel toe was part of the story about what made running skirts so popular. (Read about running skirts and sexism here.) Bike shorts are safe (phew! ) since the chamois crotch padding covers up that part of women’s bodies.

But why does it matter in the first place? Why is it even an issue?

Here’s some musings:

Partly I think it’s connected to nervousness about weight and disgust about fat. (Chubby there is bad because chubby everywhere is bad, now your labia can be too fat along with everything else.)

Partly it’s about moving to one homogenous body type. Soon we’ll all look like Barbie, with a hairless, featureless, flat public region.

Partly it’s because there should be no reminders that women’s bodies are at all sexual. No visible labia goes along with no visible nipples. (Read about nipple phobia here.)

And of course it’s about selling us things. Create a problem, some new body insecurity and then market a solution.

This makes the most sense to me since I didn’t know what camel toe was until Lululemon came along with the solution. Ignorance is bliss, I guess. Like the visible panty lines of my youth (pre thong, I bought special underwear designed to minimize VPL about which I only became aware after an ad campaign for said underwear mentioned the problem) and visible nipples now (saw special bandaid like stickers in a store just today, to wear on your nipples, under clothing and to avoid visible nipples), it’s one more thing women have to check on the way out the door. Body policing and the internalized panopticon continues.

It’s hard not see it as part of an ever increasing trend of high maintenance self care. Not just shaving, now waxing, labial cosmetic surgery and beauty standards for body bits that in the past we could happily ignore.

I look at photos from my high school days. All tight jeans and camel toes everywhere. Who knew?

athletes · body image · fashion · fitness

Finding clothes to fit athletic women’s bodies

Sam B55 Comments

Physically fit women face a variety of clothing challenges. Tracy has written about the woes of women who’d rather have a choice not to work out in pink.

I’ve written about how I’d rather risk the chance of visible nipples than wear padded bras but that’s a tricky choice these days when it comes to sports bras. (Short version: I don’t like to surround some of the more sensitive bits of my body in foam and it feels weird jogging along with added structure.)

But the indignity doesn’t end with pink or with foamy sports bras.

I had dinner recently with a friend who is in training for a fitness competition. Of course, we chatted about food and about weight training but it wasn’t long before the topic turned to our favourite lament: muscular women’s bodies and finding clothes that fit. Her leather jacket fit nicely around her waist but she was having back and shoulder issues. My fitted black raincoat worked but was obviously straining at the biceps.

We all say, and it’s true, that the standard fear of weightlifting–“But what if I get big?”–isn’t really a worry for women. Our bodies aren’t made, we say, to develop big, bulky muscles. But over time, your proportions do change.

I’ve been shopping for awhile now for jeans, boots, and jackets that fit me without fitting me like academic regalia does, that is, like a tent.

I’m a large woman it’s true but I wear standard sizes of clothes, or at least I would if I could get my biceps, shoulders, and calves into things.

My jeans are a 12 but my black coat is an XL because there is no way to get my arms into a mere large. Or my shoulders actually. I haven’t worn a button up shirt in many years. If they’re fitted, they just don’t fit. And I’m not a fan of tents.

And don’t get me started on cyclists’ legs and skinny jeans. Not a match made in heaven. When Betabrand finally announced they were making their bike to work pants in women’s sizes, many women wrote in and offered helpful feedback–room for calves, please.

Each year I admire friends’ boots and start posting to Facebook about my quest to find boots that fit. It’s almost an annual ritual that ends badly each time. Women cyclists all chime in about how we’re doomed never to wear tall boots.

So my three “problem” areas–a problem for clothing, I quite like these areas otherwise–are shoulders, biceps, and calves.

Do you have muscular bits that don’t fit into standard issue women’s clothing? What’s your strategy?

aging · body image · fashion

On not growing old gracefully

Sam B21 Comments

 

“Aging also helps us grow into ourselves. We start to know what we like and don’t like. We stop giving a fuck what other people think of us.

Imagine, younguns, a world where you just don’t give a shit about looking stupid or what your friends think or falling down in public or impressing the Joneses or having to go along with the crowd to do things you hate. Imagine how awesome that would be. The liberation. The joyous freedom. The glorious sense of possibility. Well, if you’re lucky, that’s what getting older is.” Krista Scott Dixon, In Praise of Older Women

For what it’s worth I don’t plan to age gracefully. Depending on how well you know me this may not be a surprise.

Here I am approaching my life’s halfway mark. Halfway? How could that be?

I’m 48 and 96 might strike you as a tad ambitious.

Let me explain the math. Given family history, if I make it through my forties, 90 isn’t unreasonable. One can hope.The first ten years of life don’t count as years of my life really. That wasn’t me in the sense philosophers most care about. You can read more about the problem of personal identity here.

So, dying at, or around, 90 gives me 80 or so years past the age of ten. Counting after the age of 10 then, it’s 38 done, 42 to go. Fingers crossed. Knock on wood. Etc.

I’m also at the halfway mark in my career. I began as an assistant professor at 28 and ending at 68 sounds good. And here I am at 48.

And, here’s the best bit, lots of the hard work is done. I’m a full professor. (Professors move from the rank of assistant, associate, to full.) Kids are successful and happy, in their teen years and beyond. So the stressful, hard working of getting tenure and coping with toddlers is behind me.

So I’m going to have fun. I love my job, love teaching and love research and writing. Great friends. Great family. And as you know from reading this blog, lots of enjoyable and rewarding physical activities. Fun times and adventures ahead.

And unlike young me, I no longer fret over being taken seriously in the profession and in life.

Young me wasn’t ever that concerned about what people thought about how I looked, I explained why in a blog post on body positivity and the queer community. But older me could care even less.

As I get older, I’m happier there are fewer rules but the judging of women’s bodies, clothing, and choices doesn’t go away. Feminists should see a connection between the patrolling of young women’s clothes–think of slut shaming–and the policing of older women’s choices.

There are rules, I’m finding out, about what older women shouldn’t wear: no sleeveless shirts, short shorts, mini skirts, bikinis, and more. Mutton dressed up as lamb, blah, blah, blah.

There are ways we shouldn’t do our hair: not long, no pig tails, no bangs, no wild colours.

A friend recently decreed that she was now too old to paint patterns on her nails. Patterned nails, not my thing at any age, turn out to be for the young.

Who knew? It’s a minefield of inappropriateness.

I’m not going to tread carefully.

I’m the sort of person who sees a rule and then wants to break it. Think wild flowers and clotheslines and fat cats in neighborhoods which prescribe standards about such things.

For years I wanted a tattoo but then wondered if I’d regret it as I aged. I’m older now and I have three tattoos and I don’t worry about that particular regret.But I am annoyed by people who think that my new ink, fresh plumage (thanks Ivan for that expression) are inappropriate for someone my age.

My mother recently dyed a section of her striking white hair purple and she was surprised that her new steak of colour met with disapproval from some of her acquaintances.

Another friend had a fun and incongruous, harmless, but out of character relationship. It appalled her kids. They said she ought to act her age.

I think this is all rubbish and we should recognize it as such.

We should say goodbye to the idea of growing old gracefully. Women’s bodies and behaviors don’t need to be graceful. We can be as wild and unruly as we choose.

What does this mean for fitness? I’m not going to worry about which physical activities are dignified or age appropriate.

I saw a great post on Facebook the other day about a woman who took up mountain biking for the first time in her mid seventies. I love some of the older women doing Crossfit. I hope to be running obstacle course adventure races, trying out surfing, maybe some climbing in the years ahead. Perhaps fencing. But never bingo.

 

body image · fashion

The Power of Pictures

Sam B3 Comments

I’ve been thinking lately about the power of pictures. Here’s two different contexts in which it seems pictures matter to people.

The first context is nutrition and fitness websites. It seems they all feature pictures.  Lots of pictures. Mostly of beautiful strong bodies. We want to look like those people and have bodies that look like that. We’re a visual culture and pictures mean a lot to us.

But not everyone wants to play the game this way. Some people don’t find these images inspiring or motivational at all. You can read Tracy’s piece The Inspirational Dis-Value of “Fitspo” here. Just as some people don’t want to look at photos of impossibly fit people, there are also people who are in the fitness business don’t want to post the pictures either.

The strength coach Nia Shanks, of Lift Like a Girl, has  written an eloquent piece about why she refuses to put pictures of herself up on her website. Called How to Build a Better Body & Why You Won’t See Pictures of Me in a Bikini, it’s a wonderful rant. I love good rants. You should go read the whole thing.

Here’s an excerpt:

“You won’t see photos of me in a bikini on this website or the Lift Like a Girl Fanpage.

Sure, I rock out a swimsuit whenever I chill out at the pool, lake, or beach, but I won’t post these photos.

Here’s why — it’s just not my thing.

Not the answer you wanted? Fine. I’ll elaborate.

Years ago when I was battling my disordered eating habits, I also drastically changed my approach to working out. I stopped focusing on fat loss. I even took things further and stopped focusing on how I LOOKED.

I challenged myself to focus on absolutely nothing but my performance. The only thing that mattered was adding more weight to the bar, squeezing out extra reps, performing more challenging bodyweight exercises, and running more hill sprints.

During my training sessions I wore less revealing clothes so I wouldn’t be tempted to analyze my physique before, during, or after my workout. I even made it a point to refrain from looking in a mirror when I was at the gym. (Unless I got an eyelash in my eye. Seriously, that’s just annoying and has to be taken care of immediately).”

Here’s what does matter to Shanks: “I can bust out pull-ups, handstand push-ups, dominate 50 pound dumbbells for bench pressing, and I’ve deadlifted over 300 pounds.My PERFORMANCE is proof enough.”

I’m with Shanks. I’m not sure about the amount of importance we place on pictures. But pictures of me don’t freak me out even though I’m not about to post bathing suits shot on our blog either.

Let me explain the second context in which I’ve been thinking about photos, specifically about before and after photos.

Each time I’ve done nutritional counseling, including this latest round, pictures have played a role. Photos of me in two piece bathing suit, facing forward, from behind and sideways.

The pictures are meant to broaden things beyond the number on the scale. We’ve measured weight, percent body fat and tracked using measurements. Pictures are one more piece of the equation.

Judging from discussions I’ve had with others in the same boat, this is most people’s least favorite bit of tracking. To the extent that people feel good about these photos, it sounds like they’re thinking of them as horrid, before shots. “I’ll never look like that again.” Maybe they are also people who put fat photos of themselves on the fridge to stop the door being opened. But I am very much not that sort of person.

I work very hard to love, respect, and care for the body I have now.  Love is a better motivator than hate. So while the pictures are odd, not very Sports Illustrated Swimming Suit Issue looking at all, I try to remain neutral about them. They’re just me in a bathing suit.  I have very fond feelings about this bathing suit.  It’s my favorite, bought on my last sabbatical in Australia, four years ago, and worn ever since to the beach almost every time I’ve been. I love it so much I don’t wear it in swimming pools. Chlorine would kill it. I have very happy memories of last summer in that bathing suit on the beach at the Pinery Provincial Park where we always holiday.

So, for me, the pictures are just information, telling me things about posture and muscle development that numbers on the scale alone cannot. But my focus is really on performance and I like that Shanks’ website is free of bikini pictures.

Here is Nia Shanks demonstrating the progression she took to get to hand stand push ups. I really want to be able to these! And if I succeed during this fittest by fifty campaign, I promise I’ll post a photo or video here.

Progressing to Handstand Push Ups

body image · clothing · fashion · gender policing · Guest Post

Looking Good and Working Out: A Double-Edged Sword? (guest posting at Spry)

Sam B

Sam is guest posting at Spry ‘s Fitness 4.0 blog about the double edged sword that is looking good and working out.  Read it here.

 

 

aging · fashion · injury

If I were 20 years younger! Roller derby me….

Sam B13 Comments

I don’t have a lot of regrets in life. There aren’t a lot of things about which I find myself thinking, “Wow, I would have loved to do that. If only I weren’t so old!”

Mostly I don’t feel the least bit old and there’s not a lot I don’t do for reasons of age.

I’ve told people on this blog that age is a silly excuse not to race. I wrote: “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s like saying that sex is for the young.  We’ve only got one kick at the can, one try at this life, and if something would have been fun when you were young, it’s probably still fun now. (Like sex.)”

But I do have a few regrets.  I’ve noted here that team sports, in particular rugby, is a a bit of a regret.

And  here’s something I would do if I were 20 years younger but that I won’t do now: Roller Derby.

I’d love to be Slamantha! (Do you have a derby name picked out? What is it?)

Last night I went and watched The Forest City Derby Girls.

At the end of the night it was Thames Fatales vs Luscious Lunch Ladies 218-119 for the Lunchies and Forest City Derby Girls Timber Rollers vs Tri-City Roller Girls Plan B 222 to 181 for the Timber Rollers.

They played at the agriplex where just hours earlier I’d been playing indoor soccer.  As much as I enjoy indoor soccer, it sort of pales in comparison.

I love the speed, the grace, the power of the derby girls. The sheer physicality of it, the contact, looks fun. I also like the look. All ink and bright colours  and even skeleton tights. (I want some!) Roller derby and prom dress rugby have a shared aesthetic appeal.

When I was riding track at the Forest City Velodrome some of the derby girls tried to recruit me (they practiced in the infield later in the evening). They recognized my fitness and my fearlessness but I didn’t bite.  I’ve got the cardio fitness and some martial arts skills that would do me well in derby, I think, but a)I don’t roller skate (major obstacle!) and b)I’m scared.

My fears? Well, injury is the main one and that would ruin everything else I love. I take longer to heal these days and feel hard done by by enforced periods of inactivity. My twelve weeks of training lost due to stress fractures hurt and these days it takes longer to regain fitness lost. So my “fittest by fifty” campaign won’t include roller derby…

In the meantime, I love to go and watch. You should come too. The schedule is here, http://www.forestcityderbygirls.com/schedule.

I think I’ll just satisfy my derby urges aesthetically. Maybe it’s time for snazzy skeleton tights and a new tattoo.